I think I'm going through withdrawal.

[hat_plays_sims]

How did I get addicted to Garden of Shadows so fast? I've only been a member for... six or seven months, and now that things are all down and limnal, I keep finding myself intending to go post a confession or a quick question or actually get that 'here are elventeen mesh issues that seem small to my untrained eye. Would anyone like to take a bash at one or two of them?' post I've been working on up in the Wishing Tree. My first instinct, in trying to find out whether or not the secrets were up this week, was to check GoS instead of LJ.

This is highly frustrating.

Comments

[eefje00704]

Ugh me too! I'm suffering from serious withdrawal issues here. I always want to go click on the link in my favourites bar, only to then realize it won't work. I miss the best finds thread, and the confessions thread, and the Other worlds than these thread so much!

'Hello, my name is Eva, and I'm an addict.' It's like when RSF was shut down all over again for me.

[hat_plays_sims]

It is incredibly frustrating, innit? Just. Blarg! I want to be there! I am not. I am a sad Hat. A sad Hat glaring at TSR. *grumble write to THEIR webhost grumble bitch*

Best finds. Other Worlds. Sims Confessional. Show Off Your Creations. The monthly theme. Impromptu. Pretty much everything in Pixelated. AUGH.

[curiousb]

I'm just the same! Within the space of only a few months I've gone from occasional lurker to serious GoS addict, and I'm missing it something dreadful. I usually just stay logged in while I'm working on my computer, and pop in every now and then to see what's new, or when I have a sudden inspiration to post something myself, without even thinking about it really. I guess we just have to content ourselves that the admins/mods are working hard to get it up and running again asap. In the meantime, I am quite bereft!

[hat_plays_sims]

I keep finding myself starting to bring up GoS so I can confess that I, for example, feel silly for considering posting to the Wishing Tree asking someone to fix some problematic penises on a bunch of faux-Greek statues. (Asking somebody to remove the teeth, tongues, and eyelashes from the Poser-modeled statues, I would not feel so silly about. Dude apologizes for his high-poly shit and leaves the molars in? wtf?) And not everyone is on Dreamwidth! It is frustrating. I miss people!

[curiousb]

:D (At the thought of problematic penises!)

But yes, GoS is a bit like an all-day party, with lots of interesting folk popping in and out, and I miss them all too. (The party seems to be moving to your DW at present though!)

And whenever I'm waiting say, for Bodyshop to start up, I start thinking: "I'll just check GoS... ohh... no, I won't..."

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, I'm pretty sure your average ancient Greek athlete was uncut, and also I'm sure University officials would have something to say if three or four out of seven statues that really do depict a fine male athletic figure beautifully are a little more... alert than your average classical work of art. It's hard to ask if that's a banana in his pocket if he doesn't have any pockets. (I get distracted by the DUMBEST THINGS in-game, I swear.)

If a small and yet GoSlike party wants to manifest on my DW, I shall greet it with open arms. I still have some Dreamwidth codes, even, if someone wants to really join the party.

Yup. "Damn I'm bored. Anything update? MTS is slower'n molasses in January lately, how about GoS-- oh. Oh right. It's down for everyone, not just me. Suck an inappropriately half-hard, historically inaccurately circumcised big marble cock, TSR.

[curiousb]

Oh my word, thanks for the LOLs! :D

I may even have to steal this for my signature, once GoS is back up and running (with appropriate credit, of course ;) ): "Suck an inappropriately half-hard, historically inaccurately circumcised big marble cock, TSR."

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, they are and he should! You're welcome for the lulz, cos I hit 'post' and then realized it's three in the morning and I might not have the best judgment about language anymore...

[curiousb]

Hmm, yes, I see what you mean - very nice, but perhaps a little incongruous (if the genuine articles in the British museum are anything to go by)!

And no, your judgement was spot on - they definitely are, and he most certainly should! :P

[hat_plays_sims]

They're not as bad as this one free mesh of David that I've seen a couple of places. It's like all the polys in this high-poly mesh went to his Cthulhu pubes and his toes instead of to his actual, you know. Face. (Statues are becoming a new addiction.)

I did inform GoDaddy that TSR conned them. H'ain't heard back from them, don't expect to, but considering they a) lost a good customer in Liegen and b) got their dumb asses snowed by a walking copyright violation on copyright issues, I almost hope GoDaddy goes after TSR. Because dude, someone's got to, and they've got the money to do it.

[aquilegia]

I am having so many lulz at this conversation. :D (And I totally agree. Those statues are WTF! Makes me wanna throw art history books at people's heads...)

Ah, did you see the TS3 statue extractions on MTS yet? :D

[hat_plays_sims]

I did! I nabbed them from the Phantom of the Opera movie graveyard lot that Pegasus put up, because I wanted them and couldn't find them (and finally PM'd TheJim about them, all insatiably curious). I have now hammered on the appropriate thanks button.

Although I can't figure out why statues about as stylized as Disney's Hercules look more right to me than statues that are really very nicely meshed except for Certain Bits. I must be a weirdo.

(Oh oh oh a thing I keep forgetting to ask you about-- I've been trying to get your version of the Spiritual Shrine to accept a recolor and I cannot make it go, for some reason. I'm updating the Mmats and whatnot, is there something else I need to be doing?)

[aquilegia]

I don't think you're a weirdo--it's like... art is a big fool-the-eye, and some things, no matter how perfectly rendered, look Wrong when they aren't on an actual person or thing. I think it has something to do with the static nature of art (and even movies are more static than reality, being a whole 24 fps). A certain amount of stylization avoids those things, basically correcting for the tendency to think certain angles/shapes/whatever look wrong, and allows the viewer to fill in the rest for themselves.

Which is a really handwavey way of describing it, but I haven't done art theory in way too long. XD

I've been trying to get your version of the Spiritual Shrine to accept a recolor and I cannot make it go

Augh, crap! I have no idea why this would be--that was literally my first finished object. I'll try to snatch a little free time and look into tutorials about making custom things recolourable.

[hat_plays_sims]

Stylization-- it doesn't have to be perfectly lifelike, it just has to give the impression of being perfectly lifelike. Which the Sims 3 statues do, the Gods statues do okay, they just have distracting genitalia, the Goddesses statues do not quite do (they look like lovely shapely marble Poser figures with weird, weird hair, rather than works of classical art or impressions of works of classical art) and things like That Darn David only manage in certain lighting conditions. (And hey, while I'm missing GoS, a custom content pet peeve-- statues or stone objects where the only texture is a stone texture. Shading is good! Shading works!)

It was the first time I'd tried making something recolorable, too, instead of just making recolors. It let me make some recolors after I did the Mmat thing, but the recolors don't show in game and the object says it's not designable. (Your first object has worked better than my first object, officially.) Good luck finding tutorials! I couldn't seem to find anything at all for making already existing objects reclorable. It's still awesome!

[curiousb]

Hat, I use this tutorial for guidance on making existing objects recolourable - just ignore the first bits about adding a new subset, and start from Step 3.

Oh, and well done on expressing your displeasure to GoDaddy. And agreed - it's about time someone brought TSR down - they're just way too big for their boots. Not sure GoDaddy have the gumption to do it though. :/

Hmm, I'm not sure where to start on that David. His legs are quite good I suppose... :P

[aquilegia]

LOL @ David's pubic hair being the most intricately meshed part of him.

I'll try to get it figured this week, since I'll be gone off to the wilds of the Northwestern USA for a month starting next Monday.

If the original shrine is recolourable surely the clone should be... If nothing else I'll reclone it while keeping tutorials close by my side.

[hat_plays_sims]

I shall have a good look at that when I am no longer falling over sleepy. Because I have been nodding off in my chair and it is not as awesome as it sounds.

I don't suspect GoDaddy will have the cojones for it, either, but it'd be nice to hope. GoS was a nice reliable client, really, and if they hadn't thrown in their lot with the actual lawbreakers, they'd still have our $120 a month.

His legs are nice. His toes are impressive. The pose is good. The mesh is apparently free, from somewhere.

[hat_plays_sims]

I'll give it a bash or two again once I've slept something. Enjoy your vacation! I am in the western US and bits are very, very pretty. We're having an El Nino year, so everything's still green in my neck of the woods.

The original original shrine, or the shrine via CEP? Cos vanilla, it is not recolorable; CEP makes it so.

[aquilegia]

I'm actually from that area originally (Oregon! And going back for a baby sister's HS graduation), but living in Finland for years has made it seem a very strange place to me. The last time I went back I felt very much the foreigner, and I'm sure it'll only be worse this time.

(My odd turns of phrase and such are the result of a magpie mind like mine soaking in non-American dialects and non-English languages for five years. Give me another five and my accent will be noticiably strange, too. *g*)

Aside aside, original + CEP. :) Even if I can't seem to remember to uncheck unneeded EPs in the file table, I usually remember to keep CEP in...

[oph3lia]

"Knowing issue: David has some holes." *snigger*

[silvainshadows]

Oh, god, me, too! I never realized how much time I spend lurking on GoS until it went down. And I'm pretty sure I wasn't this addicted until a few months ago... I think. I clicked a link for something earlier and was all ''it's not working?" and then "oh. yeah. GoS is down :(". And I really miss stalking the monthly theme stuff. And the picture threads. Especially Show Off Your Creations, because I love seeing what everyone is working on. :(

(Also I want to do something vengeful to TSR but can't come up with anything. So I'm just glaring at them. >:[ )

[hat_plays_sims]

I'm a Bay Area girl, born and raised. I wouldn't know what to do with Real Weather (but that's okay, if the Zombie Apocalypse comes, I live somewhere it's really hard to freeze to death). So yeah, hey, welcome home-sorta! I've heard Oregon is beautiful-- very green. I like green. It's green here now. Usually by this time of year it's brown.

I shall beat on the thing a bit in SimPE today and hope I learn something that'll make my coin heaps work, too. Fingers crossed!

[hat_plays_sims]

I have not found holes, so that's a nice thing. Sorta. It's not like he's a really well-made boy, poor David. His chest is VERY rough-hewn. The really headdesky ones are the Large Adam Statue and the Cleopatra Standing Light. Now, Adam has a certain charming mass of visible polys, and Cleo looks pretty good from any reasonable distance despite looking like she fell into her makeup box up close, but I know they're ridiculously high poly and will be culling them from the downloads folder. Why? Cos they're Poser models.

And he left the teeth and tongues in both of them.

Cleo's the worst-- every braid in her hairdo and bead in her necklace is individually meshed. Her breast-band and ornamental belt are both separately-meshed pieces-- which don't even really touch her body in any way, staying suspended by force of personality. WHY I ASK YOU. Molars are so high-poly even Sims don't have them!

[hat_plays_sims]

In a missed moment of karma sort of way, I'm a little disappointed that Liegen doesn't run a business from digitalperversion.net. It'd put her in an excellent position to sue TSR for damages due to loss of income. I think the best revenge in this case is what TSR considers piracy-- use their crap! But don't pay for it. Or, mock their crap. Mock their business practices. Publicly. Although you don't have to mock their business practices, just tell people about them. Any time it comes up in conversation, for the benefit of someone who might not know who might well be reading along. (ESPECIALLY on GoS, when it comes back up.) TSR keeps their members' unencrypted passwords and unencrypted credit card information on file. It's those unencrypted passwords that make them look like such skilled hackers-- deleting folks' MTS profiles, blogs, Photobucket accounts. NEVER use the same username and/or password on TSR that you use anywhere else on the internet, should you happen to want to pilfer TSR in order to redistribute their goodies. They do not go to cease-and-desist letters first, they do not have internet lawyers to call (unless perhaps Peggy will put in a good word for them with HER lawyer's firm, Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe-- she's either lying about legal counsel or being conned), they just plain fight dirty because they don't have any other way to fight.

And I think information pisses them off most of all.

... Well, either information or a talented CC creator turning down an invitation to join TSR exclusively and MAYBE become an FA, like what happened with Buggybooz when they hacked her MTS profile.

[morgaine2005.wordpress.com]

Unencrypted CREDIT CARD INFORMATION?!? Will Wright on a pogo stick! I knew about the passwords, and how they hacked people's accounts. That was bad enough. But credit card information?!?

Seriously. Even if EA is happy to let TSR abuse the EULA, if they know about the credit card bit they should sever all business ties with TSR. Passwords are one thing, because ideally we should have a different password for everything and change it every five minutes (not that I follow that sage advice, mind). But credit cards are a whole different story. Even if TSR won't abuse that information (ha!), what if they got hacked?

Oy, oy, oy.

On topic, yeah, I'm going through a bit of GOS withdrawal too. *sigh* Evil TSR. Evil, evil.

[hat_plays_sims]

Oh, they CLAIMED they got hacked at one point, mostly to cover their tracks about hacking Buggybooz's MTS account, I think. *skims thread looking for it*

But yeah. It's not like they made any announcements that they got hacked and people should change their passwords or anything. Mostly cos they didn't get hacked, they just didn't want Thomas in trouble. (I don't think that's the first thread I read about it. I think I read about it on MTS.)

[zoiey_may]

I'm fairly certain I'm going through withdrawal as well, but since I'm currently in the middle of Tech/Hell weeks for my drama class I'd be too busy anyway. Still miss it terribly.

[hat_plays_sims]

... Yeah, I bet the 'I couldn't even if I had time to!' is it's own brand of sucktastic. Hell Week is, predictably, hell. *former drama nerd who was not allowed to use power tools or approach the spaghetti board*

[zoiey_may]

It sucked when I could only visit on weekends, it sucks more that I cannot even do that. Oh spite, oh hell!

*what's a spaghetti board?*

[hat_plays_sims]

Plenty of places available to bitch about it, though!

I'm still not quite sure what it was. The light board that wasn't in the light booth in my high school's theatre. All I know is that only a few select designated students were allowed to go near it. My little sister was one; after I was thrown by the electric screwdriver (despite being one of the go-to auditorium rats for creative shit), it was determined that I was not and would not be. But it was called a spaghetti board because it looked like one of those old-school telephone switchboards, with all the doodads on cords that plugged into other doodads and you had to know tech crew voodoo to use it without breaking pretty much everything.

[zoiey_may]

What the heck kind of use is a light board not in the light booth? You wouldn't know when to change the lighting! I was the /one/ allowed to man the lights, but when I decided I liked acting better, only the director was.

[oph3lia]

Yeah I deleted him, his face and chest look weird.

Surely rather then using poser models, a sim model could be extracted and posed.. probably more work though. Ugh, is it really that difficult to try to make things more useable? lol. I don't have much object meshing experience else I'd probably have a go t removing something stuff. The only object I edited so far I hacked bits off of lol.

[hat_plays_sims]

Well, the David and the Venus De Milo both appear to be free meshes for something else-- I've seen the same meshes two places as separate objects. (Sgooby and Suzi for David, Suzi and DH for Venus.)

I HAVE seen some sims-as-statues over on InSimAdult, but alas they have on Marvine's heels. Otherwise I'd absolutely have them.

I have a long (and growing longer!) list of seeming-simple mesh fixes that someday I will post to the Wishing Tree. Someday! Cos I'd never get anything else done if I learned to fix my own meshes.

[hat_plays_sims]

There was a light board in the light booth. Also sound board. I really was not allowed to mess with that stuff, for some reason. I THINK the stuff in the booth was newer, or something.

Our three main electrical techs were Chris and Jimmy (lights), Janice (sound) and my sister (two years younger than them and learning to do everything).

[zoiey_may]

We only needed one person for lights and sound because our boards were actually borrowed, and the lights mostly programmed; just press some buttons, flip a switch and move a lever at the right time.

[hat_plays_sims]

We were not so lucky to have anything programmed-- and I finally found out what the spaghetti board does! It's a bit like an old telephone switchboard, actually. The lightboard in the booth controls the lights, but the spaghetti board is where the hanging lights are connected TO the lightboard in the booth. At least if they haven't replaced it since I graduated (which was long enough ago I'm not saying how long).

[zoiey_may]

I don't remember anything like that with ours, although it has been six years since I last worked a light board.

[eefje00704]

Hi there, can I join the GoS party? ;p

You could have a look at Hugelunatic's tutorial for your non-recolourable object. I think you mentioned that you already checked the MMAT Guid, so skip to the 'missing tsdesignmode enabled' part. http://sites.google.com/site/hugelunatic/making-objects-recolorable Sorry if this is of no use, or if you already knew about this.

And the David statue. Well, I was sort of the person who requested him. The original free mesh looked very much like the real statue, but Suza (from simplystyling) then tried to reduce the poly count as much as possible. And well, you can see the result. I'm still grateful to her for trying to make me Venus and David statues though.

[hat_plays_sims]

Always room for one more at the GoS party, no matter where it happens!

Thank you for the link, I'll have a look at that! I'm really, really new to object... stuff, in general.

Now I feel a little sheepish about ragging on the David. *facepalm* I think it must be the original free mesh that has issues once it's in game, because Sgooby's look about the same (worse, actually, they have this weird shimmer like they're placed over another object) and I don't think he reduces poly count at all (statues with teeth and gums and eyelashes and individually-meshed braids and beads, et cetera). It could be a texture thing, too-- David always seems to be a solid-colored texture, but Venus has some shading and detailing, and she's the best of the three at Suza's. (Although I do like the Madonna and child-- somehow the rough-cut look suits them.)

[aquilegia]

I HAVE seen some sims-as-statues over on InSimAdult, but alas they have on Marvine's heels. Otherwise I'd absolutely have them.

That wouldn't be too hard to fix, really, 'cept maybe for the mapping. Not like I can do it right now, but unless someone else gets to it, give me a ping sometime in late June? I'd like to try.

[aquilegia]

Oregon's greenness is somewhat overstated. *g* The Willamette valley is very green--it's actually called temperate rainforest--as are the surrounding mountains and the coastline, but as far as I know all of central and eastern oregon is high desert, lots of sagebrush and scrub and brown. However, the civilization there is all farms and rural towns, so the metropolitan green part of the state tends to forget about it (I say with an eyeroll, as my hometown is IN Eastern Oregon).

The hills and plains in E. Oregon look about like the Bay Area does, most of the year (except it's bone dry, not humid in the least), but with more pine trees when you get to the mountainous bits (like the Blue Mountains in Northeastern Oregon). It's like that right up into Washington, and possibly even up into Canada, although I'm not sure. I DO know that the swathe of temperate rainforest goes right up through Canada.

/geography geek. :D

[eefje00704]

I think you know more about object stuff than I do. I only know how to do recolours and how to fix unrecolourable objects to make them recolourable.

The free mesh that Stephanie (Suza) based him on is this one: http://artist-3d.com/free_3d_models/dnm/model_disp.php?uid=577&ad=02anatomy_design.php&count=count
But of course the polycount was through the roof, so she had to reduce it by a lot. She couldn't choose specifically what parts to reduce or something, which is why his chest and face lost so much detail. She tried to repair most of the holes caused by lowering the poly count, but couldn't get it to look just right. At first I'd only requested him in the small size, and it looks quite acceptable, I think, but then I asked for him in a larger size too, and then you could really see the difference. The venus is another matter. The bottom part is from a free mesh and the upper part is mostly from a maxis statue, Stephanie then added the shading because it really didn't look good without. She really put a lot of work into those statues, it's not like she just threw the original mesh right into the game.

[hat_plays_sims]

You're a step ahead of me, then-- I know how to make SOME unrecolorable objects recolorable, but other than that I just have a loose idea of how things are put together. It's like understanding that most bridges are built to withstand high winds and earthquakes, but not being able to reproduce the same effect just by reading about bridges.

That's... really odd that she couldn't choose where to reduce the poly count. I wonder why that is-- I can certainly see how being stuck with reduced polys in places you didn't want them could make for a problematic mesh! I've heard there are poly-reducing programs out there... I wonder if she ran the original mesh through one and it removed more polys from planes like his chest and face than from areas it may have seen as more detailed and thus probably more important, like his feet and pubic hair.

[hat_plays_sims]

Yeah, folk tend to forget just how much of California is farmland, too-- almost anywhere you get something described as a valley, we gots farms.

I've been up through the Sierras a couple of times-- my sister had her wedding in Lake Tahoe, once or twice I've gone to Reno with Mom-- and it's always fun to watch the trees change from scrub oak to pine as you leave the foothills and enter the mountains proper.

[hat_plays_sims]

I'll try and remember that, thank you! Or add them to the extra-weird wishlist along with deflating a few of Sgooby's statues' enthusiasm.

[eefje00704]

I don't know how to fix them all either. If they don't have an MMAT, I have no idea how to fix them.

Steph used Milkshape to reduce the polycount, I think. The original had about 30.000 faces I think. After reducing them by a lot she said "this David would have still much polys what could be reduced, but not with Milkshape. The direct x mesh tool begin to reduce from the inside, but I can´t tell this tool which parts it should reduce...there are also a lot of polys in the hair what will not be needed, but it don´t work this way. Whenever I try it again, the face is lost complete : (....and if I splitt David and try to reduce I have again much holes" I don't know anything about meshing, so I can only go by what she said.